Royal Iced Biscuits

Two weeks ago I went on a baking course that I brought as a present to myself. I have spent many an hour on Instagram and Pinterest looking at the spectacular biscuit creations that can be made using royal icing. So when I saw there was a course to learn how to do them at the Iced Jems kitchen I decided that was an ideal Christmas present to myself. So off I went, lunch box packed, note pad at the ready, to the day long course which was run by Victoria's Kitchen.

I had such a good day! The course was fantastic, the other students were lovely and the setting was perfect! The Iced Jems shop is a wonderful independent baking supplies shop with a teaching kitchen right in the shop window. I left a very happy bunny with a box of iced biscuits to share with friends that evening and a boot full of biscuit cutters and baking equipment from the shop.

The collage of pictures below are just some of my creations from the day.

The finished results from the course.

I couldn't wait to try the skills I learnt again at home. I was eager to try all the different cutter shapes I had and use lots of different colours.  The icing takes a good few hours so I would highly recommend making your biscuits the day before or a couple of days before you would like to ice them.


You might see the phrase 'no spread biscuit recipe' banded about quite a lot when looking up royal iced biscuits. There is no difference between a 'no spread biscuit recipe' and a standard biscuit recipe so don't let this fool you. The secret to biscuits that don't spread and remain in their cut shape is in chilling your cut biscuits for at least 1 hour before baking. There are no magic ingredients, just a sprinkling of patience required.

You can used any biscuit recipe or flavours you fancy. These were just simple vanilla biscuits using the following ingredients:

• 200g Caster Sugar
• 200g Butter
• 1 Egg
• 1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
• 400g Plain Flour

- Cream the butter and sugar

- Egg the egg and vanilla

- Add the flour

- Roll out to about 5mm thickness and cut out your desired shapes. 

- Chill the shaped for at least 1 hour before baking for 12-14 minutes at 170c fan

The biscuits can be kept in an air tighter container for up to a week. Just make sure they are completely cool on a wire rack before putting them in the box or icing them so that the stay crisp.

You can cook your biscuits up to a week before you want to ice them.

The next stage is all about preparation. You can make your own royal icing however you will end up wasting a lot of egg yolks and it is so much easier to used a ready made royal icing. On the course we used 'Squires' you just add 75g of water and hey presto royal icing. When you have made your royal icing you need to cover it with clingfilm touching the surface until you are ready to use it.

Top tip - cover your mixer loosely with clingfilm to stop icing sugar going everywhere!

Royal iced biscuits require two different consistencies of icing. A thicker stronger icing for outlining your biscuits and adding detail and floor icing for filling your biscuit. The thicker icing is made as per the instructions on the packet, the flood icing is made by adding a little more water. There is no exact amount to add but if you follow the '8 second rule' you will have perfect floor icing every time.

Basically, you carry on adding water a little at a time until when drawing a knife through the icing is takes 8 seconds for the icing to completely disappear.

If you follow me on Instagram there is a video demonstrating this on there.

You need to decide what colours you are going to use as you will need an amount of each colour in both consistencies of icing if you want your outlines to match your flood On the course we used white to do all out outlines which reduces the amount of separate colours and piping bags you need. However I prefer them to match and in the future I will use less colours and less different shaped cutters at one time so that I can do this. Otherwise you end up with lots of piping bags on the go and lots of bowls to wash up! 

For the outlines you need to use piping bags with number 2 piping nozzles in. For the flood icing you can use a slightly wider nozzle. The ideal thing to use the the squeeze bottles in the picture below.

Preparing to ice!

When you are ready to ice you start by piping outlines around all of your biscuits with the thicker consistency icing. Use a paintbrush and water to seal any joins in the icing. Hold up each biscuit and make sure there is no sunlight under the edging. If there is your flood icing could leak. Use your paint brush to nudge the icing in the right direction to fill any gaps.

By the time you have outlined all of your biscuits and had a cup of tea it will be set enough to flood. If you are not happy with your outline you can just take the icing off - it is really easy to remove if you want to start again.

Use a thicker royal icing mixture to outline your biscuits and create a 'damn' for the flood icing.

Now its time for flooding! Gently squeeze your flood icing out nudging it to the edges. You can use a  cocktail stick to push the icing into tight corners and pop any air bubbles that might be there. Tapping the biscuit gently onto your work surface will also do this.  Be careful not to use too much flood icing that it spills over your edging.

You can use contrasting coloured flood icing to add some simple but effective decoration such as the polka dots on the sweetie.

Spotty designed created using 'flood on flood' technique.

By the time you have flood iced all of your biscuits you can add further decoration with the thicker consistency such as the detail in the carrots, the bunny tails and bows.

Once you have mastered the icing consistencies the options are endless - be as imaginative as you want!

Overall I wasn't too happy with the batch I made last week. I got carried away with too many different shapes and didn't have enough colours to do them all as I would have liked. Next time I will only use one or two different shapes I think.

However, I am very happy that I now know who to make these little treats and will be making many more batches to come. I think they will make lovely gifts for friends and family or make an impressive offering if you have house guests round.

In future posts I will video some different techniques such as how to do the roses on the teacup and how to make hearts.

For now though, happy baking!

Let me know if you give royal icing a go - I would love to see your creations.

Rach x

 

Add simple detail using thicker royal icing on set flood icing.